


To Wake Up Safe

by Deannie



Series: Cowboys and Zombies [11]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M, Old West Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7664734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra didn’t bother to look down at himself. The scar was as livid and rough as it always was, he was sure. When everything else healed more quickly and without blemish, this damn thing stayed, like a scarlet letter proclaiming his inhumanity, his inability to do “the right thing.” Though how committing suicide could ever be seen as right, he wasn’t sure. And now, he didn’t think it would change anything, either.</p><p>“My God.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ezra Standish hurt. Everywhere. Unable to breathe as deeply as he wished, he settled for breathing at all, and counted himself lucky. He’d had worse than being stoned, certainly, and at the hands of more evil individuals, but this latest attack served only to convince him that he had better find a safe—and preferably sane—place to hole up for the end of the world, and soon.

Chaucer’s gait was becoming a bit more labored, but she shared her man’s fear of the things that hunted the night, and she moved ever forward, slacking off only as the pre-dawn gloom revealed them to be on a blissfully barren plain where they would be able to see the zombies coming. Ezra’s body begged for sleep as well, but the only truly safe place in the world now was a place of habitation. Over the next ridge, maybe.

Or the next.

Or the next.

His injuries were enough to threaten to send him into that terrifying sleep of the damned he’d experienced more than once since Santa Fe—a healing unconsciousness that he went into unwillingly and emerged from whole and recovered. Sometimes he panicked that perhaps he just died, like the zombies, only to be reborn into himself instead of one of them. Whatever it was, he fought it with every fiber of himself now, knowing it was possible that neither he nor Chaucer would live the night if he gave in. Good Lord, he was tired of running, even if, this time, he was running to safety instead of from pursuit. 

He hadn’t been surprised that the cowards at Eagle Bend hadn’t chased after him. They hid behind their pathetically inadequate gates and dictated the terms of every man’s entry and didn’t leave. Ever. In that they were no different than most of the towns he’d been through since leaving Santa Fe. They  _ were _ a little different, however, in their treatment of anyone they thought might carry the disease that Ezra worried was slowly ruining the human race.

Oh, it wouldn’t wipe it out, of course—the war had shown him too well that man could kill man endlessly and there’d always be another soldier to take a dead one’s place. Humans had a knack of recreating themselves so as to perpetuate the madness. But he’d passed through towns where the mere thought that a person might be ill had been enough to doom them to a swift death; where scavengers didn’t always wait until the sickness took a town before they started stealing all the survivors had. People were becoming… well, some of them seemed damn near more inhuman than  _ he _ was. He coughed again in the growing dawn and sighed.

Death Sickness, they called it around here. In New Orleans, he heard they were now calling it  _ Le sommeil mal _ —The Evil Sleep—though thank God they hadn’t seen the horror reach that far. Few people were allowed past the border of Texas anymore without serious scrutiny, and Ezra knew he’d never stand up to that. It hardly mattered. There was nothing to go home to anyway, and God knew he didn’t want to see his mother as he was now.

Everyone had a different name for the disease, it seemed, and no one could do anything about it. The people here called the undead a lot of different things too, but they all amounted to zombie in Ezra’s mind.

He was damn lucky not to be one. He supposed he was even luckier that quick reflexes and a quicker horse had saved him from being dispatched by the “law” of Eagle Bend as a zombie, untried and unsubstantiated.

Well, mostly unsubstantiated.

He hacked hard, damning the infernal cough that the sickness had left him with months ago. It had never progressed beyond that in the more than half-year since he’d been bitten—not that it mattered. He still sounded infected and people were getting more and more paranoid by the day out here. He tried to tell himself that the cough wasn’t getting worse, that he was just acclimating to the drugs he used to mask it, but he wasn’t sure he believed that any more than other people believed he wasn’t something one step from feral, waiting to strike.

Quite simply, he was doomed. Either the sickness would kill him or those who were uninfected would. And it never seemed to take long to wear out his welcome and fear for his life.

He’d traveled from city to town after leaving that unpleasantness in Santa Fe, making sure, at first, that he had a healthy supply of stramonium, or at least straight tobacco, to quiet the cough. But both, like everything else, eventually became harder to come by, and by the time he was halfway through the poker game he’d been winning under the watchful eye of Sheriff Staines in the saloon at Eagle Bend, he’d known he was in trouble again, his coughs coming not frequently, but brutal when they did.

“Saunders, you said your name was?”

Staines had a vicious cast to almost everything he said, and Ezra had had a bad feeling about him from the first. Not that he’d had much choice in stopping there, with night nearly upon him and the nearest town four or five hours of hard riding away. He’d been run out of more than one town for the sin of surviving, but he’d always been lucky to have it happen in daylight hours.

He took a sparing draw on one of his few remaining cigars and smiled up at the man as he stood over the table. His poker opponents had wisely pushed their chairs back.

“Indeed it is, Sheriff,” he offered amiably. “How may I be of service to you?” He silently flexed his wrist against his Derringer rig, praying he wouldn’t have to shoot a live person. He hadn’t fired on a human being since killing those men bent on murdering him in Santa Fe and the thought of it made him sick in a way it hadn’t ever before. Like he was helping the zombies cull the herd.

“I have to say, I’m becoming a might concerned,” Staines said. “Right harsh cough you have there.”

“And have had since my childhood,” Ezra pointed out. Which was, surprisingly, the truth. He’d been afflicted with asthmatic fits for much of his life, though they were rare. And of course, this was not one.

“Still,” Staines said quietly, his hand on the butt of his gun. “Reckon maybe you should be moving on.”

Ezra looked out into the darkness. Five hours at least until dawn. And only ten hours since he’d entered the town—that was something of a record, even for him. “I shall, of course, vacate at first light, Sheriff.”

He heard no fewer than four guns cock their hammers back.

“I’m thinking now might be better.”

Ezra didn’t have to affect the fear in his voice. “You wouldn’t honestly turn a man out into the night with those fiends, Sheriff, would you?” Not that this was the first time it had happened, but it was never pleasant, and Ezra had been on the move enough in the last few days to be well and truly exhausted just sitting here.

“Like as you’ll be one of them fiends by sun-up anyway,” said another man, his gun in his hand, pointed at Ezra’s skull. “Or dead before you can turn.”

Ezra rose fluidly, gathering his winnings into the overlarge pack he never let go of. “I suppose I will have to take my chances then.” He turned toward the door, all too aware of the guns at his back.

“Not with my ante, you don’t,” one of the men behind him said boldly.

Ezra resisted letting his chin drop to his chest. Of course. Why waste your rations on a dead man, after all?

In other days, before the world fell into this endless chaos and horror, Ezra would have offered up his winnings for his freedom. But now, in  _ this _ world, what he carried in his sack was all he had. It wasn’t freedom, it was survival.

He wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“I’m afraid I’ve won these items fair and square, sir,” he said, walking on. “I shall certainly need them if I’m to be cast out like a leper.” He didn’t flinch when a bullet plowed into the wall beside him. Truthfully, he’d been expecting it to plow into his skull. He was pretty sure even  _ he _ couldn’t survive a shot like that.

“Reckon we’ll have to do a bit more convincing, eh, boys?” Staines said coldly.

Before they could advance on him, Ezra leapt for the door, whistling shrilly for Chaucer, who untied herself from the hitching post in response, racing toward him and slowing down just long enough for her man to jump on her back before making for the town gate.

They had men waiting for him there, of course, and the fall of rocks toward him nearly unseated him, though he supposed he should be glad that they were apparently running low on bullets. He weathered it as best he could, cursing as one hit the side of his head and another his eye, in quick succession. He urged Chaucer to a hard run, silently promising her that, should they survive the night, she would get a proper reward in the next town.

If there was a next town…

And here, as the sun rose and banished the undead for at least a little while, as his exhausted mare stumbled to the top of another ridge and stopped to rest, here was the next town. He looked down into it, his one eye swollen shut from that well-placed stone, sharply painful as he surveyed the place.

It was called Four Corners, and Ezra knew nothing about it, except that it was the next town east from Eagle Bend and that it was, reportedly, fortified.

Which was a delightful understatement.

“Finally,” he murmured, patting Chaucer on the neck and feeling her relax at the sensation. “People who might have an inkling of what they’re doing.”

Four Corners consisted of at least twenty buildings that he could see, plus a large paddock and field, all ringed by a tall, solid plank fence. Most towns had much more ramshackle fortifications, which was probably why most towns were dying at an alarming rate. This organized wall would actually pose an impediment to the zombies getting in.

A covered watchtower had been added to the top of the fence, and Ezra assumed there was one on the other side of town, though he couldn’t see it from here. He could see two men in the tower, though, both with rifles trained on him. A two-story, white clapboard house stood alone outside the gates, within safe sprinting distance of them. Ezra wondered what on earth someone had been thinking, building outside such lovely strong defenses.

He nudged Chaucer gently on her way and reviewed his options, trying to cough carefully so that the sentry wouldn’t take him for a zombie-to-be and shoot him down before he could even approach the town, though the fact that he had a little too much in common with the monsters they’d built that wall against made him feel a bit like he was riding to his death. Not that death was as easy or as clear a process anymore, he thought, his stomach twitching with tension. At least for him.

He shook the notion away and calmed his heart with an effort. He had a surprising amount to trade in his saddlebags, which should get him in the door and to a room where he could sleep the sleep of the damned and recover. From there, he’d have to determine the lay of the land . The town seemed to have people in charge who knew what they were doing, but that didn’t mean they’d be  _ reasonable _ people in charge. He’d have to go carefully.

The nervousness remained, the gnawing in his gut growing until he finally recognized it for what it was—that hatred he just couldn’t stop. He searched the area around the town and sighed.

“Aw… Hell.”

His view of the valley as he descended revealed something that the sentries would have seen, had they not been focused on him. Zombie horde—perhaps two dozen of them, coming out of the north and headed for the town.

Ezra motioned to the sentries, trying to get them to look to their right. He was too far away to be heard but he shouted a warning anyway. “TO THE NORTH!” One of the men looked up, but the other kept his rifle on Ezra.

“Chaucer, my dear,” he murmured, knowing she couldn’t take a run right now without risking injury, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer for that extra care I promised you.” He nudged her into a slightly faster limp. 

The itch to destroy bloomed as he watched the zombies come, and it was all he could do not to draw his rifle and start firing. He’d be dead for sure if he did it, with a gun already trained at his head.

He didn’t know exactly why he’d never run from a fight with the zombies, why they kindled such a fury in him; such a need to protect the world from them. In his life before this, he’d been a singularly selfish man, by his own admission. Money had been his only goal, or so he liked to tell himself. But since the zombies came, he truly had never failed to meet them head on—even when he probably should have.

Now was likely one of those times. His right arm and leg both hurt horribly and his head was still ringing from the stones that had hit too near their mark.

Hell. It wasn’t as if he had a choice.

“Hey the town!” He shouted as he approached the white house. “Hey the town! Undead to the north!” The two men were already turning with their rifles ready, and Ezra finally pulled out his own, sliding off Chaucer’s back and shoving her toward the house. Not that it would be any kind of shelter, but it gave him room to maneuver and put him between them and her.

More rifles appeared at the top of the wall, arrayed along it and firing at the zombies. Standing unsteadily on the one leg that would hold him, Ezra took down two himself before the rest were decimated by the surprisingly coordinated attack. It was something of a shock to feel the urge to kill receding as quickly as it had come and it left him shaky.

“Whoooeee! Damn that was fun!” yelled a jovial voice as the firefight ended. Ezra looked up, his energy flagging now the danger had passed, and saw a bright-faced man of about forty with a broad mustache, smiling at him from the guard tower. “No one’s at home there! Why don’t you and your horse come on in? We want to thank you for your help.”

Ezra waved his left arm, his right screaming at the very thought of the motion, and gathered Chaucer’s reins, using her as a crutch and leading her slowly to the gate as it opened, spilling out a handful of men. He stopped and surveyed them nervously.

They were led by a young man no more than twenty, wearing a three-piece suit and a bowler hat, strangely enough. A tall man of his own age with spiky blond hair, a portly dark-haired man in his fifties, and two young black boys rounded out the group. 

“Thanks for the help, mister,” the bowler-hatted youth said. “We’ll take care of it from here.”

Ezra wasn’t sure what his response should be. Take care of what?

“Don’t mind them,” the mustached man said, now standing at the gate with that friendly smile still on his face, though beneath it seemed to run a wariness akin to Ezra’s own. “Can’t let the damn bodies stink up the place, can we?”

“Of course not,” Ezra agreed. A large poster, nailed to the gate, captured his attention.

BY TOWN DECREE

ALL VISITORS AND THEIR HORSES   
WILL SUBMIT TO INSPECTION    
BEFORE BEING ALLOWED TO   
ENTER THE TOWN PROPER.

FAILURE TO SUBMIT WILL    
RESULT IN IMMEDIATE EXPULSION.

WOMEN WILL NOT BE ASKED TO SUBMIT TO INSPECTION BY MEN.   
CHILDREN LIKEWISE

WELCOME TO    
FOUR CORNERS

“Quite a welcome letter you have there,” Ezra murmured, stumbling badly as he stepped forward, his head spinning. Lord, this was it, wasn’t it? They’d see him for what he was and kill him right here. “My horse,” he said, clearing his throat to speak a little louder. “She needs care.”

“Tiny!” the tall man bellowed. “We got a—”

“I am not blind  _ or _ deaf, Buck,” came the irritated, heavily accented response. A huge blond man stepped forward and gently took Chaucer’s reins. “I will look her over,” he promised, noting her labored step and breathing. “Is she…? She was not—”

“I am not a monster, to subject a horse to such pain, sir,” Ezra cut him off, struggling to remain upright now that Chaucer’s support had been removed. Exhaustion threatened to overcome the fear of being found out. “Chaucer is as safe as I can keep her. But we have been travelling since just past midnight, and we met with misfortune before that.”

“Yeah, I can see,” the mustached man—Buck, Tiny had called him—said, gently taking Ezra’s left arm and holding him up. “Once we're done here, we'll get you on up to Nathan’s clinic.”

Ezra very much doubted that, but he let Buck lead him inside, unable to do much of anything else, now his body was insisting on leaning on the taller man. “Buck Wilmington,” he introduced himself. “Thanks for helping out.”

“There hardly seemed to be a choice,” Ezra responded. He suppressed a cough and tried not to limp too badly. “Ezra P. Standish, at your service.” At least they'd get his real name on the tombstone.

A striking blond man in black stood just inside the gate, and Buck walked toward him, his step low to match Ezra’s pronounced limp. Clearly some sort of town leader, the man pegged Ezra with a penetrating glare from stormy green eyes. _ Lord, he is lovely,  _ Ezra thought, his mind dizzy from pain and exhaustion.  _ Probably shoot me by the end of the day, but lovely.  _

“Thanks for the help.” The man stuck out a hand. “Chris Larabee.”

Ezra almost laughed. Of course he was. “Ezra Standish,” he replied, gripping the hand awkwardly with his left. His right failed to open and close, and Ezra wondered how long that had been going on. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that one of the fastest guns in the territory should be holed up in one of the best-secured towns.”

“You think so?” There was a wicked humor in that deadly smile, and Ezra calmed himself with an effort. Beautiful or not, the man probably would be shooting him soon. They’d throw him on the heap of zombies, likely. Burn him, too. His head had taken to throbbing again, along with the rest of him, and he wondered how much sense his thoughts were actually making.

“I hazard you don’t get many zombies who actually make it into town,” he commented, delaying the inevitable. “Good Lord, if Eagle Bend had half as secure a perimeter as you have, they’d still be the largest town in the area.”

Buck snorted. “Staines is an idiot and the Mayor is probably  _ still _ crying in his room like a baby.” He looked Ezra up and down again as he limped along. “Speaking of, you came from the west—Staines being his usual welcoming self?” He sounded a little like he wouldn’t mind delivering a beating to the good sheriff, and Ezra wondered idly where the animosity came from.

He shook his head ruefully, then cursed at the dizziness. “The good sheriff has a way of convincing people it’s time to move on.”

Buck clapped him on the shoulder and Ezra forced himself to remain upright and not to cough.

“Like I said, we’ll get you to Nathan as soon as you’re checked over,” he promised gently. “He’ll fix you right up.”

Ezra stumbled again, and it wasn’t because of his unstable leg. “‘Checked over?’” he asked. “Inspected, you mean? Your poster isn’t very explanatory.”  

“Head to toe,” a great bear of a man said, smiling a welcome. Ezra smiled back, but tightly. “Anyone who comes in from the outside—even one of our own—gets checked for bites they either didn’t notice in the thick of a fight, or choose not to share knowledge of.” There was a significance to the man’s stare suddenly, that Ezra did not like.

“That’s… quite ingenious,” he remarked with a grin. Yes, indeed. He was doomed.

“Sure is,” Buck agreed. “Ezra Standish, meet Josiah Sanchez.” Buck threw an arm over the man’s shoulder and topped him by a good three inches. Ezra had thought Sanchez was taller. His presence certainly seemed to be. “Preacher, doomsayer, and damn good with a rifle from a height.”

“Pleasure to meet a man so willing to pitch in,” Sanchez said.

“It’s a sordid pasttime, but necessary,” Ezra replied. He really was going to collapse soon, he feared. Though he supposed he didn’t have to worry about a place to hole up here. They’d kill him in his sleep if they were kind. “My horse?”

An eager blond boy, all of nine years old, came forward from where he’d been watching the new arrival. “She’ll be okay. Mr. Tiny said she’s got a calf strain and some bad bruises, but JD’ll take care of her.”

“Thank you, Billy,” Sanchez interrupted, gesturing Ezra to a set of converted horse stalls right inside the gate. “We’d best commence with the pleasantries before you pass out on us.” 

Ezra’s palms began to sweat.

“Mr. Standish?” Sanchez stood waiting, suspicious of the delay. Larabee and his friend Buck looked on without expression.

Ezra sighed, trying to think of a way out of this. Not the stripping—there was clearly no way out of that—but a way to explain himself. It had always been a stroke of luck that even wary towns had never asked to see what lay beneath his shirt and vest. It was just too much to hope for that these people would have run into someone like him before—after all,  _ he _ hadn’t.

“Certainly, Mr. Sanchez,” he said, limping even more badly now, as if his body itself wanted to delay the inevitable. Sanchez helped him to the barrel beside the door and gestured to his firearms. Ezra reluctantly shed all three of them, figuring he wouldn’t need them anymore, once Sanchez got a good look. “I must say, this is one of the more elaborate rituals to have sprung up since the dead began rising.”

“Not exactly a genteel welcome, but it keeps the town safe.” Sanchez led him into the stall and closed the door. “Gonna have to ask you to take everything off.”

Ezra thought he might be sick right there. There was of course, a chance—however slim—that this man wouldn’t recognize the mark for what it was. Ezra took his time with jacket and vest and boots and trousers, hissing and at one point stifling a scream as he bent down. His right leg was swollen and black with bruising at mid-shin and his right arm didn’t look much better. The change in elevation as he stood straight again nearly dropped him right there.

“Take it easy now,” Sanchez said, compassion thick in his tone. “Don’t want you hurting yourself any more than you already are.”

_ Oh no, wouldn’t want that, _ Ezra thought sarcastically.  _ I should leave a good-looking corpse.  _ “Have you ever found a person who’d been bitten?” he asked, trying to sound morbidly curious.

Sanchez shook his head and Ezra started to relax—for half a second. “More than one, sadly.”

Doomed.

The big man shook his head again, and Ezra couldn’t interpret the sigh he gave. “I’ve come upon whole wagons full of people who knew they’d been bitten and couldn’t live with what they might become.” 

Ezra gritted his teeth at that. He’d heard it before and God, he hated being made to feel like a coward, even unknowingly. “Surely some survive?” he ground out, taking a deep breath as he stripped out of his drawers and was left with only his rather sweaty and over-worn silk shirt. He began to unbutton, facing Sanchez.

He wouldn’t be shot in the back.

“You would think,” Sanchez said slowly, clearly suspicious now. He straightened up, hand on the butt of his pistol, waiting for something.

Ezra wished  _ he _ had a gun. Even naked, he could shoot his way out. He finished unbuttoning his shirt, pulled it open, and waited for the horror to wash over Sanchez’s face.

He didn’t bother to look down at himself. The scar was as livid and rough as it always was, he was sure. When everything else healed more quickly and without blemish, this damn thing stayed, like a scarlet letter proclaiming his inhumanity, his inability to do “the right thing.” Though how committing suicide could ever be seen as right, he wasn’t sure.

And now, he didn’t think it would change anything, either.

“My God.” 

The whisper wasn’t as horrified as Ezra expected, and he focused on Sanchez’s curious eyes. 

“How long ago were you bitten?” 

That was not at all the question Ezra expected to be asked, and he answered reflexively. “Seven months.”

“Get your clothes on,” Sanchez said, a bit of urgency in his voice. “Leave the shirt unbuttoned, but cover it up.” There was secrecy there too, which Ezra could probably have sussed out the reason for if he wasn’t two steps from unconsciousness.

“Buck?” Josiah called casually out the window. “How’s Nathan coming along? This boy could use him.”

“I swear to you,” Ezra said quietly, trying to struggle back into his trousers, his right leg all but useless for the moment. “I swear, it isn’t what you think.” His head was swimming and he could feel himself shake as last night’s flight and this morning’s fight began to catch up to him in earnest.

Buck Wilmington appeared just outside the stall. “Nathan’s on his way. He finally pass out on—damn.” The last word was whispered, as he stared at Ezra’s chest, the bite fully visible where he hadn’t covered himself quite yet. Standish felt obscenely like a curiosity in a traveling exhibit.

“May I sit?” he asked, trying for a meek tone. In reality, it was hardly a stretch. He cursed himself for ever stopping here, cursed the coughing fit that he couldn’t hold off any longer. Damn it, he thought as the hacking took him and doubled him over, he was going to pass out and be left defenseless before men who had no reason whatsoever to trust him.

“Get him sat down before he passes out.”

Chris Larabee’s sharp tone had Ezra looking up. Larabee, too, peered over the stall’s door. But he seemed less to be gawking and more… assessing. Though a threat or something else, Ezra couldn’t say.

Sweet Jesus, all he wanted was to sleep! He nodded gratefully as Sanchez pushed him back to sit on the bench built into the wall. The cough eased off finally, and Ezra closed his eyes, trying desperately to stay awake.

“What happened?”

A voice out of Louisiana came to him and Ezra almost smiled. Perhaps this man understood the zombies better. Maybe there was a chance he wouldn’t be killed outright.

He felt someone slide his open shirt to the side—to show off the bite, no doubt. “He’s got a bite, Nathan,” Sanchez said, riding over the doctor’s curse at the news. “Says he was bit seven months ago.”

The way he said it made Ezra want to open his eyes, but the lethargy he so despised was catching hold of him now. He fought it with all he had, but he was just too worn down.

And the doctor didn’t seem surprised or even troubled by the information. “What about all this bruising? And that eye—what the hell happened to him?” Gentle, callused, huge hands pushed at him around the scar and then ghosted over his aching ribs before pushing on his right leg.  _ That _ opened his eye. His vision still blurry, he shoved the man away, hissing as his arm protested. “Get away from me!” He wouldn’t be manhandled like this, especially when it only made his leg hurt worse.

His one good eye peered more closely at the man who now held up his hands in surrender. “Good lord,” he blurted, too exhausted for tact. “Your doctor is a negro?”

“Better let that negro see to you, son,” Wilmington told him, an edge of menace and anger to his tone. “Pretty much the only one who can fix you up around here.”

Ezra’s eyes fell closed again. His body had simply had enough. “I don’t need his help,” he refuted, slipping sideways in his mind. If he woke, he woke, and he would be healed completely, as usual. He was just too tired to fight it anymore. “Just shoot me and get it over with.”

And then the sleep of the damned dragged him down and he was certain that he  _ wouldn’t _ wake again, but couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad.

**********  
to be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

“What are we going to do with him?” Buck asked, looking at the man now passed out across the bench, his shirt open to show a scar as rough and swollen and bitter as Nicholas Carpenter’s had been, even though it was months older.

Nathan reached down and buttoned up the man’s shirt, the solid material covering the scar completely. “Get him up to the clinic,” he said matter-of-factly. “Whatever happened to him, he’s been worked over good—I’m pretty sure that leg is broke. Don’t know about the eye.... How’d he get as far as he did in this condition?”

“That ain’t what I meant, Nathan—” Buck began.

“What’s going on?”

JD stuck his head into the stall, and Buck saw Jake Jensen right behind him. “Wow! Is he gonna be okay?”

Josiah and Chris exchanged a meaningful glance.

“Been beaten pretty good,” Chris said, calm and cool and not-quite lying. “Nathan and Josiah were just going to get him up to the clinic and look after him.”

“Oh, okay,” JD said, having clearly caught the look the two older men shared. “Well, I’m glad he ain’t bit, is all. He was sure a help this morning.”

Josiah and Nathan slung the man between them, leaving his stockings, boots, vest, and jacket strewn across the stall. 

“His horse sounds like she ain’t in much better shape,” Buck put in, shooting Chris an annoyed glare. “Reckon maybe you could take a look at her, JD?” Why Chris didn’t want JD—or anyone else, for that matter—knowing about the bite, Buck didn’t know. But he was damn sure going to find out. Mrs. Meyers was six months out when she went crazy again.

He reckoned Ezra Standish was something of a stick of dynamite with a damn short fuse.

Nathan grunted in irritation as he and Josiah started moving. “Damnit, his arm might be broke, too,” he said quietly. “Can’t believe  _ people _ did this to him.” He looked up at Jake. “I left a form on the desk for you. Answer to Dr. Parker’s question yesterday. Anything from San Francisco?”

Jake shook his head, looking at Standish with pity. Buck had to admit, he was a pretty damn pitiful sight, alright. “Nothing from Dr. Cossican. I’m guessing another relay post has gone out and nobody’s figured a workaround yet.” He frowned his dissatisfaction at the state of the telegraph industry. “I’ll get that message out to Denver for you, though."

Buck nodded to the two younger men, and followed along after Nathan and Josiah, his gun in its holster, but at the ready.

**********

An hour and a half later, Nathan looked down at the man on his clinic bed, surveying his work. Ezra Standish was mottled by bruises, his left eye bandaged with a poultice, his right arm and leg now splinted. Nathan had strapped the broken arm to his patient’s chest, but only because the wrapping was useful for covering that scar. 

“Seven months,” he murmured, disbelieving. He took a lancet from his table and jabbed it into the man’s left thumb, squeezing until a fat drop of blood welled up. Standish didn’t even twitch.

“Sleeping awfully deep,” Josiah commented from his chair in the corner. Buck was leaning on the wall next to the preacher, hand resting lightly on the butt of his gun and his face a weird mishmash of worry for a man he didn’t even know, concern that the town was in danger, and fear that he’d have a zombie on his hands any damn minute now.

Nathan ignored Buck’s conflict and nodded, smearing the blood on a slide and sealing it. “Just like when Nicholas first fell ill. I don’t remember him sleeping like that once he recovered though.”

Since Nicholas Carpenter had committed suicide two months ago, Nathan had been working in his clinic instead of in the quarantine house. They hadn’t had another person come into town bit, and honestly, until Standish showed up, Nathan hadn’t had any idea of what he’d do when they did. Most of the town hadn’t listened to the rumors of some survivor going rabid somewhere else. Most figured Nicholas was just depressed or crazy or whatever the hell else they wanted to think. 

But there were enough who believed that rumor—hell, not even a rumor, but a _true_ _story_ —of a woman who’d been seen as a survivor, lived with her family and rebuilt her life, until one day Mrs. Meyers had unaccountably gone all the way over into the madness that characterized this sickness and savaged her husband and daughter before her son had shot her in the head. 

Nathan and Josiah and the others of what JD kept calling The Five were the only ones who knew the gruesome details—that information had come by mail, Parker being too afraid to send the news via telegraph. But the other people who had heard the short of it, however they had heard, about what happened to the survivor in Denver were going to be a problem the next time Nathan tried to save a life.

Cossican had the only long-term survivor now, and he was running with Nathan’s idea of a vaccine, testing Banner’s blood to see if they could extract something useful. He hadn’t had much luck yet, but maybe, if Standish was willing to help–if he recovered—they could start to make more headway working in two places.

All this went swirling through his mind as he headed for his microscope, set up on the desk. He fixed the prepared slide to the clamps. 

“Reckon the fact he’s sleeping so deep means he’s going to go downhill again?” Buck asked.

Nathan shrugged, putting his eye to the eyepiece and focusing it. “Don’t know.” He studied the blood for a long moment. Standish had a fair number of contaminants in his blood and fewer immunisin cells than Nicholas had had. Nathan shook his head. “Blood ain’t telling me nothing anyone else’s blood hasn’t already.” He straightened up. “But he ain’t turning right this instant.”

“Well there’s a comfort,” Buck muttered. 

“I’m not even sure that Nicholas would’ve turned. You know that, right?” Nathan said, sick of Buck’s depression. “Mrs. Meyers might’ve been an isolated case—Banner’s still alive in San Francisco.” He picked up the thick envelope he’d finally received from Cossican today, dated three weeks ago. Damn mail was getting slower and with the telegraph lines down, he had no idea what Cossican had come up with lately. “Mrs. Meyers’s blood when she turned was mostly contaminant. Standish doesn’t have as many new cells as Banner or Nicholas, but he still has a hell of a lot more than Mrs. Meyers ever did.”

“That don’t mean he’s safe, Nathan—” Buck began.

“Well it don’t mean we should just shoot him in the head, either, Buck!” Nathan barked at him. “Could be he’ll survive. Could be Mrs. Meyers was just unlucky.”

“Could be we still don’t know what makes this damn thing tick or how to stop it,” Chris Larabee said as he walked in the door, glaring at the both of them. “You boys might want to keep it down if we’re going to keep our new friend’s condition to ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Buck said, turning on Chris but lowering his voice. “Why  _ are _ we keeping it a secret, anyway?”

“Because when Nicholas Carpenter killed himself, he proved to every naysayer in this town that survivors can’t survive,” Chris said reasonably. He looked up at his friend. “You were the one who told me that you were sick of seeing people die needlessly, Buck,” he reminded him. “Said we needed a little crazy to fix this. You changing your mind now?”

Buck snorted. “Maybe I’m full up on crazy,” he said darkly. But after a long moment, he stole a look at the pitiful man barely breathing on the bed and ran a hand through his own hair. “Never said I wasn’t going to give him a chance,” he defended himself. “It’s just… We got two, Nathan. Two survivors out of how many bit? And there’s no saying they’re gonna stay alive—not after what happened in Denver.”

“Banner’s been alive and stable for five months,” Nathan told him. “Standish here says seven. If we can figure out what’s different about the two of them, maybe we can figure out a way to pass that on to the rest of us.”

“Inoculation,” Josiah proclaimed. “You mentioned it before, but with so few survivors…”

“I know,” Nathan agreed, irritated. “I know—there’s not enough blood. But if we could create a stable sample, a small one that worked, then we could use the people we innoculate to create more.”

Buck looked at them both like they were insane. “You’re talking about infecting people? With  _ this _ ?!” He glared at Chris and headed for the door. “Damn, Chris, I said a little crazy, not suicidal.”

Chris put a hand on his arm, and Buck stopped reluctantly. 

“He has a point, Nathan,” Chris said finally. “No one’s going to agree to be infected with this thing.”

Nathan sighed. “It wouldn’t be the whole disease, don’t you get it? Standish and Banner, they must have something in them that blunts it. Makes it less deadly.”

“But people who get the smallpox vaccine still get cowpox,” Josiah pointed out reluctantly, clearly not wanting to step into the conversation. “It’s still infecting them.”

Nathan ran a hand over his scalp. This damn disease...

“The horses,” Chris murmured. “If you tested it on a horse, would it work?”

“I… I don’t know.” Nathan considered it. “I never seen a horse survive this yet. And I don’t even know if something from a human would work on a horse.”

“Something from a cow works on a human for smallpox,” Josiah reminded him.

“You gonna sacrifice those horses of yours?” Buck asked, stunned. Nathan knew what he was saying. Chris had thrown himself into horse breeding again since he’d come to Four Corners and those damn animals were precious to him. Josiah once mused that it was something positive and living Chris could do in a world of death, and Nathan figured he had a point.

Chris shrugged. “Ain’t a choice I’d normally make, no. But I don’t know as we have a lot of options.”

“Okay, this is even assuming you can do this, Nathan,” Buck said, willing to give it a chance despite his clear ideas about the outcome.

Nathan nodded, feeling the weight of all this on him again as he sat down. “Cossican sent me a whole lot of stuff on how vaccines are built and how to spin the blood. We’d need a few specialized parts we can’t make or get here, but we need to build a centrifuge. That’ll separate out all the types of blood cells.”

Buck nodded. He was a funny one. Didn’t have much more formal learning than Nathan himself, and certainly wasn’t an intellectual giant, as Josiah would say. But Buck grasped a damn sight more of what they were doing than others did, and he had a brain that just craved information like his body craved women.

“So how do we build one?” Buck asked. 

Josiah stood up. “I believe you mean how do Jurgen and I build one,” he corrected with a smile. “With the blueprints we got, of course, and a hell of a lot of swearing.” They all grinned a that, just like he’d no doubt planned. “Nathan, I’ll go and get some food, make an appearance so people don’t get the idea that our friend there is anything more than a traveler down on his luck.”

“Which brings up a point,” Buck said. “Why didn’t you want to tell—”

JD chose that moment to barrel in the door. “What’d you want to see me about Chris?”

Chris grinned at Buck’s annoyance. “It wasn’t JD that was the problem,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “What happens with Standish stays in this room, with us five. We don’t tell anybody—Jake, Mary,  _ anybody _ —until we know what’s going on with him.”

“What do you mean, what’s going on with him?” JD asked, looking at the bruised and battered man in the bed. Realization dawned. “You mean he’s been bit?”

“Town’s still reeling after what happened with Nicholas and that lady in Denver,” Chris told him. "Another survivor ain’t gonna be well-received.”

JD nodded his agreement. “ _ Is _ he gonna survive, though?” he asked, staring at Standish for a minute. “He’s barely breathing.”

Nathan had been watching to make sure Standish kept doing just that, in fact. “Were times at the beginning with Nicholas when I just sat next to his bed with a gun and waited.” He swallowed hard at the memory of a pistol under Carpenter’s chin, Nicholas’s own finger on the trigger…

“He pulled through in the beginning,” Josiah reminded him, clapping him on the back and pulling him from his memories. “Reckon if we’re lucky, this young man will, too.”

Nathan nodded, eyes flicking up to meet Josiah’s thankfully. “We’ll need a watch on him just the same,” he said practically, though he wished he didn’t have to consider what would happen if Standish died. “Just in case. If he wakes up enough to cough, there’s licorice tea on the stove. We should have some of that beggar’s stalk nearby if he wakes all the way. Seemed to work best on Nicholas’s cough.”

“I’ll stay here,” Chris said, surprising Nathan—and Buck, too, it seemed. “Buck, get out.” It wasn’t said unkindly, but it wasn’t a request, either. “Have a drink. See Loretta. Something.”

Buck grumbled, but he left. Nathan wondered what the man had been like before all this. There were times when Buck was a happy-go-lucky scoundrel, times when he was as positive and driven about this cure as Nathan was, but sometimes he had a streak of depression in him when it came to this epidemic. Though given his own experiences across the territory, Nathan supposed he couldn’t blame him. And at least Chris could get through to him when he got that way; get him to get away from the problem and blow off some steam.

“Want me to…?” JD asked, gesturing after Buck. Nathan grinned. Lord, those two were long-lost brothers if he ever saw them. 

Chris grinned wryly. “If you think you can keep up with him, sure.”

Josiah chuckled as JD rolled his eyes and left as quickly as he’d come. “I’ll get you both some food,” he said, but Nathan rose. He needed some time away to think, himself.

“I’ll go with you.” He looked over at Chris, who was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at Standish and deep in thought. “You let me know if anything happens,” he said.

“You’ll be the first to hear the gunshot,” Chris assured him blackly.

Nathan sighed as the door closed behind them and Josiah clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s hard being the beacon of light sometimes, my friend,” he joked, leading Nathan down the stairs. 

Damned if he wasn’t right.

********

Chris stared at the mottled, bruised face of the man in the bed and sighed. He wanted to believe this would all work. Hell, for the first time since he’d come home to find his family in ashes, he wanted to believe the world could be saved.

Sarah would be so proud.

He took a seat beside the bed and thought. Four Corners had been growing, and now that the way station (which needed a name other than Jensen’s “Loserville”) was up and running between it and the next town, there was a potential for people to stop spending all their time worrying about the undead and start worrying about living again. 

Guy Royal and his crew were dead and gone, as were most of the other outliers, but Nettie Wells and Jasper Carmichael, Ken Banks and Peter McElroy? They were all safe and happy on their ranches or farms. They shot down the occasional undead visitor but most of their time was spent growing their cattle herds or working the land, and just being… people. That was all you could really hope for these days. Just live like people and pray you didn’t die like animals.

“Hell of a God damned way to do business,” he muttered to himself.

Restless, he rose and wandered the room, idly picking up the thick sheaf of papers the doctor in San Francisco had sent. There were detailed drawings of blood, the little evil black cells that could turn a man into a monster swimming in the soup of it. Banner’s blood was different from the drawings Parker had sent of Mrs. Meyers blood. Parker’d had a young man named Weir, too, who’d survived for six weeks before going feral, but that was before he’d got hold of a microscope.

Chris examined other drawings, tacked on the wall and carefully labeled. Nicholas’s blood was like Banner’s: a mix of those strange new cells and normal blood, more new than normal, with black dots of contaminant infrequent but there. Meyers’s was different, the black spots more frequent and seeming to spread on the paper if you stared long enough.

Hell, maybe she really was just unlucky.

He bent to look at the sample already on the microscope. Standish was some mix of the two, more new cells than Meyers, but more black spots than Banner and Carpenter.

“Wish this’d all make some sort of sense soon,” Chris said into the silence. He walked back to sit in the chair by the bed and stared at the man until he’d seen him take two breaths—which took longer than it should have. Didn’t quite seem fair. Standish might be a good man to have around if he survived—quick to join a fight, ready to help. The shape he was in, there’d’ve been no shame in making for the town gates and begging entry while the rest of them took care of the undead, but he’d thrown himself into it without thinking.

Under all that bruising and mayhem, Chris figured the guy wasn't half bad looking, either. He snorted to himself. “You’ve been alone too long, Larabee,” he opined, kicking the chair back slightly and propping his feet up on the bed. It'd been awhile since he'd looked at a man like that. Hell, he’d about decided that time in his life was just an aberration in between Ella and Sarah. But here those feelings were again... He watched Standish's chest rise and fall and ignored everything for a while.

Buck wasn’t the only one to need a little time with his damn brain turned off, apparently.

Or maybe Chris just needed to go see Greta when Nathan got back.

********

“NATHAN!” 

Josiah looked up in alarm as Johnny Harper ran toward the two of them as they headed back to the clinic a few hours later. They’d eaten, had a drink, watched Buck make time with sweet Loretta and, thankfully, repair to a room with her. Nathan was finally starting to relax, which was usually when he got the best ideas about how they could do something about all this.

“Nathan you gotta come quick,” Johnny said. “Pa fell through the roof when he was fixing a hole—I think he’s hurt real bad!”

Nathan nodded to the young boy and spoke in that calming way he had. “I’ll get to your daddy right away, okay, Johnny? You do me a favor—” he looked up at Josiah. “Can you go with Josiah and get my bag? Josiah, I want you to check over that man who came in this morning,” he said significantly. 

Josiah nodded as well, putting a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and steering him toward the clinic. He’d hurry the child along so he didn’t get too good a look. “You come along with me, Johnny. Nathan’ll get your pa all fixed up.”

Johnny was quickly and easily sent on his way without much more than a curious stare at the unconscious man on the bed. Chris smiled at the child’s “O” of surprise at Standish’s condition, and assured him that the poor man would be fine.

“You sure you’re telling the truth?” Josiah asked, closing the door behind young Johnny and turning to the sideboard to collect a few things. He had no idea how long Nathan’d be gone. Wouldn’t hurt to change the poultice on that eye and check Standish’s other wounds while he was at it.

“I got no idea about any of this, preacher,” Chris admitted to him. “But he’s still breathing. As much as he has been, anyway.”

Josiah chuckled at that and unwrapped the bandage holding the poultice on that badly swollen eye. Nathan was worried about it, and Josiah could well understand. He hoped the man could still see out of it when he came to. If he came to.

The poultice came off easy and Josiah turned immediately to put it in the bucket Nathan kept for those so they could be soaked and cleaned out and used again. He turned back to the bed to find Chris on his feet examining the eye.

Which was a damn sight less swollen than it had been.

“What the hell is that?” Chris asked, sounding almost angry in his confusion. 

Josiah shook his head and bent over the young man. The eye was less swollen—the bone around it, which Nathan had told him he thought might be broken, was less swollen... On instinct, Josiah unwrapped the bandage on Standish’s left hand that had been bruised and torn. 

“Dear God,” he whispered, showing Chris the hand and its smooth skin, pink and newly healed. “It’s been less than a  _ day _ .”

“Been less than eight hours, Josiah,” Chris growled. “What the hell is this guy? Carpenter didn’t do this.”

Josiah thought about it, leaving the hand unbandaged. He considered whether he should put a poultice on the eye again, but decided to wait for Nathan.

“I don’t think Nicholas was ever really injured since he was bit,” he said finally. “Could be surviving has more benefits than just waking up.”

“Damn,” Chris whispered. He was looking at the young man’s face with a peculiar expression. "You reckon he’ll heal up completely?”

Josiah shook his head. “No idea.” He wrapped the rapidly healing eye in simple bandages. “We’ll have to see whether he wakes up or not, first.”

Chris was still staring, looking more thoughtful now. “‘I don’t need his help,’ he said. He wasn’t talking about Nathan being a black man. He really doesn’t need it.”

********

Standish’s healing continued to astound them all for the next 24 hours—as astonishing as his continued deep and unyielding sleep. He didn’t move, didn’t cough. There were times Buck had to watch him carefully to see if he was even breathing.

But he was. It was a hell of a thing.

Nathan had removed the bandages but figured he’d leave the splints in place until—if—Standish woke up and could tell them whether his arm and leg were really sound. Jack Harper was recovering from his own broken leg at home, and they were lucky Nathan didn’t need to bring any patients into the clinic. If asked, Nathan just commented that Standish was exhausted and hurt, but not nearly so bad off as it had looked at first. No more than one of the other four of them was in the clinic at one time, but Buck was hoping no one was getting too suspicious.

“Hell,” Nathan muttered from his place at the desk. He’d taken another sample from Standish and was drawing another of those blood sketches he had all over the wall. 

“Problem, Nathan?” Buck asked. He’d calmed down since yesterday, realizing that, maybe, Standish wasn’t the imminent threat he’d thought he was.

“Just wishing the lines to San Francisco were clear,” Nathan griped. “I’d like to know what Cossican would have to say about this. Parker says he never saw anything like this from Mrs. Meyers, but she was a mama taking care of her children. Not much call for this kind of damage to a lady like that, you know?”

Buck shook his head. “Shouldn’t be much call for this to anyone,” he grated. “I’m of a mind to go on over to Eagle Bend and have a discussion with the good sheriff about this.”

“Won’t do you any good, Buck, and you know it,” Nathan returned, and Buck sighed. He did know. Staines was a fool and a cruel individual and the people of Eagle Bend were so damn scared by what was going on that they’d just follow him blindly if he seemed like he was keeping them safe. “And I ain’t sure it’s going to change things much anyway.”

The defeated tone in Nathan’s voice had Buck looking up at him. “Nathan?”

The black man sighed. “There’s more of that contaminant in the blood sample I took just now.” He stared at Standish carefully. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s healing or if…”

“Hell,” Buck said quietly, echoing Nathan from a few minutes ago.

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed.

*********  
to be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

“So you’re saying healing like this is pushing him over the edge?”

Buck Wilmington. Ezra’s mind mulled the words over, decided they made no sense, and tried to return to sleep.

“I don’t know,” the doctor (the black doctor—who would have thought such a thing was possible?) said, sounding frustrated. “Might just be a byproduct of the healing and he’ll go back to normal once he’s all done.”

Ezra snorted in his half-asleep state, wondering if they were talking about him. Normal was something he’d lost long ago.

“Mr. Standish?” The doctor’s voice was quiet, soothing. “Mr. Standish, can you hear me?”

“I’ll go see if I can find Chris,” Wilmington declared. 

A door opened and closed and Ezra tried to come up with the energy to open his eyes. Chris. Larabee? Wasn’t Larabee supposed to have shot him? Ezra’s left eye was still bandaged but the stabbing pain was gone now, so he blinked his right eye open to find the doctor staring down at him with a surprisingly compassionate smile on his face. 

“Been waiting for you to wake up,” he said. “You up to drinking some water?”

Ezra nodded. “Please,” he asked. This was all very peculiar. He was used to waking alone in whatever hole he could secret away in. This time, he looked around to see himself in what looked like a simple clinic. Not dead.

The doctor helped him sit up and Ezra realized he had a splint on his right arm. It was still sore and stiff so he let that lie, though he was certain the restraint would be unnecessary in a few days. His right leg was the same. A cup of water was placed in his left hand and he drank it gratefully. But the water going down set off a coughing fit, and Ezra panicked, leaning forward and trying to catch his breath.

“Easy now,” the doctor said softly, confusing him all the more with his care. The cough was deep and wracking—the man couldn’t help but realize that it was the Death Sickness, could he? 

A door opened and closed again and Ezra barely heard it over his own hacking. Now he’d started, he couldn’t stop, and he knew, somehow, that his bag was nowhere nearby. The opium sweets he used so sparingly when it got this bad were out of reach.

“Relax,” the doctor murmured in his ear. A mouthpiece was placed at his mouth, his teeth crashing against it as he coughed. “Take a puff here, Mr. Standish.”

Easier said than done, but Ezra made the attempt. The smoke was sweeter than tobacco or stramonium, and he choked on it a moment. It was vaguely familiar…

“Once more,” the doctor coaxed. “I promise, it’ll help.”

The second lungful went in easier, and Ezra began to calm down. By the fourth long draw on the pipe, he was breathing almost regularly. Unfortunately, he recognized the concoction. An Irish cure-all, Siobhan had forced it on him when he first awoke to this nightmare.

“Beggar’s stalk,” he rasped, looking up at the black man. “A singularly vile weed.”

The doctor smiled at that. “I know. Tastes like burning sugar cane, but it does its job.” He took the pipe away, moving the hand which had apparently been rubbing Ezra’s back. “You doing better now?”

Ezra took a moment, then surveyed the room. Wilmington and Chris Larabee were standing by the door, watching him with a mixture of pity and wariness. 

“I believe I have myself under control,” he allowed. He tried to slide his feet down to the floor at the side of the bed, but the doctor’s hand on his bare chest stopped him, the man's fingers almost grazing the bite that disfigured him. 

“Not so quick,” Nathan told him gently. “Just give yourself a minute.”

_ For what? _ Ezra wondered.  _ A minute before you shoot me for the monster you must think I am? _ But no. He’d slept—it was dark outside, so he’d slept enough that they could have killed him easily… What the hell was going on?

His fear clearly translated. “We ain’t going to hurt you,” the doctor said in that so-familiar accent of his. His eyes held a touch of horror and another of excitement, but Ezra was too off-balance to puzzle out what the combination might mean. “Reckon you’re feeling better than you were, but your leg and arm’re still broken, and I’m betting your head ain’t feeling so good, neither.”

Ezra nodded warily. He already felt mostly recovered, though. His energy, he knew, would be returning quickly as the last of the injuries healed. 

“My name’s Nathan Jackson, and I’m the only healer you’ll find around here.” He said it like Ezra would perhaps refuse to be treated by him. He almost laughed at that, which set off another hacking fit. He didn’t need healers anymore. The old nausea and horror rolled over him. What  _ had _ he become?

“Josiah says you were bit a while ago?” Jackson asked, once Ezra had regained control again.

“Seven months,” he confessed. There was little point in prevaricating now. And he was still here, so perhaps they were more reasonable than he’d hoped... “In St. Louis. Until then, I had no idea zombies were anything more than voodoo fairy tales.” He smiled thinly at Larabee, who was watching him with an intensity he found captivating. 

“How’d it happen?” Larabee asked.

“I should perhaps have been more discriminating in my choice of bed partner,” Ezra allowed. He settled himself back against the mound of pillows and tried to relax muscles sore and aching from his coughing fit.

“You  _ slept _ with one of them?!” Wilmington asked disgustedly.

Larabee had a slightly… odd… look in his eyes. One Ezra fancied he recognized. 

“No, of course not,” he said mildly. “I was pursued by a jealous spouse who turned out to be more than just jealous.” Larabee didn’t seem to miss his word choice. He looked interested. How very unexpected. “At any rate, she didn’t look like a zombie at the time.”

“Might have just turned,” Nathan thought correctly, either not noticing the sex of that spouse or ignoring the implication of a simple pronoun. He looked Ezra up and down carefully. “Zombies, huh? You spend time in Louisiana?” he asked, meeting Ezra’s gaze with clear, intelligent, brown eyes. The compassion and excitement there intrigued him. Nathan was a man who was up to something.

“My mother is partial to New Orleans,” Ezra offered by way of explanation.

Nathan nodded and redirected the conversation, leaning forward with an intensity altogether different from Larabee’s. “You had the cough the whole time?”

“It comes and goes,” Ezra allowed, though he knew he was stretching the truth. “Worse just after the damned sleep.”

“Damned sleep,” Wilmington put in, scoffing at the mild term. “Is that what you call it?”

Ezra nodded. Lord, these men were strange. Was no one concerned that they had someone… some _ thing _ inhuman… in their midst? “I don’t know what else to call it,” he said truthfully. That old fear was there again, that the sleep was more than sleep. That he somehow died and was reborn each time, cursed with an immortality no one in his right mind would choose. 

“How many times has it happened?” Jackson asked.

“Only when I am grievously injured.” He chuckled despairingly and the cough threatened again. “More times than I’d like to number.”

Larabee gave him a long, almost sad look. “Reckon you’ve run into more trouble than most,” he offered. “Can’t be many places that don’t know the signs.”

Ezra shook his head. “Sadly true, Mr. Larabee. As I said, more times than I’d like to number.”

“Who got you through it the first time?” Jackson asked. 

“My cousin’s wife—” The cough caught Ezra unawares and he started hacking before he could truly answer. Jackson offered the pipe, but Ezra shook his head with a wary smile. “I shall stick to my stramonium, if I might have my satchel returned.”

“The Beggar’s Stalk seems to work better on this cough,” Jackson told him. 

Ezra sighed and took a long pull on the pipe. He had to admit that the horrible smoke calmed his lungs in very short order. Jackson’s words filtered through his brain. “You have experience in treating this, I take it?” he asked, curious despite himself. 

“You ain’t the only one to live through the worst of it,” Jackson said quietly.

Ezra looked at all three of them. There was something he wasn’t being told. “I never really thought I was,” he replied carefully. “Though I admit, the longer I’ve gone without meeting another, the more I have wondered. Perhaps I might get an introduction?”

Jackson’s face fell and Ezra held back from sighing. “Perhaps not.”

The silence stretched for a few moments before Ezra’s cough reared its ugly head again.

“Stramonium ain’t something people usually know about,” Jackson commented. “You have the asthma?” 

“I took my first fit at the age of nine,” Ezra admitted.

“Ain’t why he’s coughing now, though, is it?” Larabee asked.

Jackson ignored him. “How’d it go? When you were bit?”

“I was unconscious for days,” he said, shuddering at the memory of Siobhan’s fear. “I was insensate but dangerous for some of those. After that, it was something like influenza and just as unpleasant.” He lost the battle against his lungs abruptly and sucked on the pipe again. “It was quite some time before I regained my health, but I did so fully.”

“Except for the cough,” Buck stated.

“Yes, well. Except for that.” Ezra touched the huge, ugly scar on his chest, its teeth prints still horrifyingly visible. “And the scar.”

“Seven months, huh?” Larabee said quietly, a thread of ease—and maybe sympathy—in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Hell, it’s a wonder you ain’t been strung up before now.”

“Shot in the head,” Ezra responded, feeling more at ease himself the longer these men stood here without guns drawn. “Hanging isn’t actually all that effective unless their heads are severed in the fall.”

“Lot of experience killing these zombies, then?” Buck asked.

“I  _ am _ still alive, Mr. Wilmington,” Ezra pointed out, his head starting to ring from the beggar’s stalk. Another annoying downside to the herb. “Eagle Bend isn’t the first town that’s thrown me out after dark.”

Buck snorted. “Figures it’d be Staines,” he growled. “Man’s a damn menace.” He looked Ezra up and down. “You looked right pathetic when you come in here, son,” he said kindly.

Ezra sighed in irritation. “Sir, you are only ten years my senior. I hardly think that gives you the right to call me son.”

Chris snorted. “Just how young you think he is?” The man had a wonderful, inviting look in his eyes. Ezra idly hoped he could get a few moments with Larabee to talk of other things, and then chastised himself for such an unreasonably optimistic thought. They might not be ready to kill him just yet, but that didn’t mean they were planning on asking him to dinner.

“Forty-two,” He said without question.

The two men exchanged a look.

“You’re thirty-two years old?” Buck asked, confirming his estimation. “Took you for twenty-five, at most.”

Ezra grinned his most boyish grin. “Looking younger than your age is never a bad thing in my line of work.”

“Which is?” Larabee led, still a grin playing about his attractive lips.

“In days past,” Ezra qualified, “I was a poker player and a con man of some ability.” He sighed and deflated slightly, the damned cough catching him off guard. “Now,” he hacked, “I fear I’m lucky to survive the day.”

“Well you’ve survived today at least,” Larabee told him firmly. “Figure, with the shape you were in when you got here, you should count yourself lucky.”

Ezra’s stomach clenched at the idea, but he smiled and nodded graciously. In the beginning, he’d been thrilled to survive. When he ran into that unpleasantness in Santa Fe, he thought he’d been given a sort of silver lining.

Now, with the world as it was, he was beginning to see that it was all simply a curse. Different than that visited on the walking dead that roamed the countryside, but a curse all the same.

“Reckon you could use some more sleep,” Jackson commented. He must have been drifting. “We can talk more later.”

“I believe I could do with a short nap,” he agreed, curling up on his unsplinted side. In truth, he was as slept out and energized as he always was when he woke to the world again. He gamely closed his eyes and heard the three men shuffle out and close the door behind them. He rolled back onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

_ Count myself lucky, _ he thought sharply. The bitterness was quickly blunted as his mind conjured up Larabee’s eyes.  _ Perhaps… _

*********

Chris, Buck, and Nathan met Mary Travis at the bottom of the clinic stairs, and the serious look on her face set off alarms in Chris’s mind.

“Mrs. Travis,” Nathan greeted her politely, shooting Chris and Buck an anxious look. “Something I can do for you? Billy okay?”

“Billy’s doing fine,” she told him distractedly. “How is Mr. Standish doing?”

“Getting better right along,” Nathan allowed.

“What’s wrong, Mary?” Chris asked bluntly, sick of the small talk. It was obvious that whatever she had to say, they weren’t going to want to hear it.

“You know the mail and telegraph in and out of San Francisco has been spotty at best in the last couple of months,” she began. “I… finally got word from a newspaper man I’ve been in contact with since we started working on the pamphlets for slowing the spread of the disease.” She focused back on Nathan. “The university hospital was burned to the ground more than two weeks ago,” she told him sadly. “A riot broke out at a rumor that they were keeping the undead alive inside. The entire complex was leveled.”

“Damn,” Buck whispered. 

Chris wanted to curse, himself. Banner and Cossican had been the only other hope they knew about.

“Any survivors?” Nathan managed to ask.

Mary shook her head sadly, handing over the letter in her hand. Chris looked over Nathan’s shoulder and scanned it. It was from a man named Daniel Spitzer, and the body of it was a newspaper article Spitzer was going to print—likely  _ had _ printed, days ago—about the incident.

No one knew how the riot had started, of course, but by the time the police and local army regiment had stamped it out, the twenty or so people who had been holed up in the university since the worst of the epidemic hit—including Cossican and Banner—had been killed and the laboratories and medical facility destroyed.

“Everything’s gone,” Nathan murmured, looking suddenly gray and faint. “Hell, that package I got from Cossican? Might’ve been the last one he ever sent.”

“Most of San Francisco is under the Army’s control now,” Mary said. 

Buck stiffened in anger. “Probably cut the telegraph lines to stop word from getting out,” he said.

Mary looked scandalized. “The Army wouldn’t do that, Buck,” she averred. “The city is in chaos and someone has to try to maintain order. Daniel says he’s getting out as soon as he’s able. He can’t risk staying there anymore.”

_ The end of civilization, _ Chris thought morosely. Would the same thing happen here if people found out they were harboring a survivor upstairs?

“God damn, I need a drink,” Buck growled, kicking up dirt as he stomped toward their preferred saloon.

Nathan sighed. “I should let JD and Josiah know,” he decided. “And I don’t want to leave Standish alone too long if I don’t have to.”

“I can stay with him, Nathan,” Mary offered. “Such a horrible thing to happen.” Chris didn’t know if she meant Standish’s beating or the slaughter of two dozen innocent people who had only been trying to stop the disease they were all afraid of dying from. She sighed. “It’s like the entire world is going mad.”

Neither of the men could argue. “Josiah’ll stay with him, Mary, thanks,” Nathan said, sounding normal to Chris, thank God. Mary would be safer if she didn’t know the truth about Standish. She’d post Spitzer's story in the newspaper tomorrow, and God knew what the response from the rabblerousers’d be.  _ Probably have a damn party. _

“Just let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, Nathan,” Mary offered softly. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”

She moved on and Nathan and Chris were left staring at each other.

“What the hell are we going to do now?” Nathan asked, seeming to despair for the first time in months. The healer had been driven and positive and ready to destroy this menace from the moment Chris met him. “I ain’t no doctor. What do I really know about any of this?”

“More than anyone else,” Chris reassured him. “And more than any doctor, that’s for damn sure.” He clapped him on the back. “Reckon we’ll find Josiah in the saloon this time of day anyway,” he said. “Let me buy you a bottle.”

Nathan snorted coldly. “Hell, might even drink the whole damn thing tonight.”

Chris shook his head and led the way. He might do that, too.

*********  
to be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

Buck was on his second glass of whiskey when Jake Jensen walked in the saloon before dinner time four days later. The young telegraph man nodded at him as he got his own whiskey and Buck gestured him over.

“How’s the newest refugee doing?” Jake asked amiably.

“Real good,” Buck allowed. “From what Nathan says, he should be up and about any day now.” In truth, Standish—Ezra—was climbing the walls of the clinic, grumbling about being a prisoner and a laboratory animal. He was the only survivor left, and Nathan was examining him eight ways to Sunday, hoping to get something that he could start testing.

Fully healed now, Ezra was a beacon of wrongness in a town that was still buzzing about what had happened in San Francisco. Whether people believed the truth of it—that the military had taken control to squelch any stories from getting too far out of town—or saw it as just desserts for people trying to save them that shouldn’t be saved, all of them were talking about it.

Ezra was the first to say that it wasn’t the right time for him to show his unbruised face. Buck reckoned the amiable cardsharp had had to deal with the repercussions of his miraculous healing before, and probably in climates more volatile than this one. He understood the situation better than any of them, but he wasn’t going to put up with the status quo a whole lot longer.

“Good thing,” Jake said. “Looked like hell when he came in.”

Buck drained the rest of his glass. “He did that,” he agreed. “Nice guy though,” he offered, meaning it. “If you can get over the coughing—ain’t a wonder people thought he was bit. Never met a man with the asthma before.” The seed of Standish’s coughing had been planted days ago, but good stories always needed tending. “Annoying as hell.”

Jake nodded, looking sad. “My sister had it—died of it when we were kids.” He grinned a melancholy grin. “Jesus, there were nights she’d keep us all up with the hacking.”

“Seems like Nathan’s got some things’re working for him, though,” Buck replied. “Just gotta let that leg healed enough to get him down the stairs.”

They fell into silence for a few minutes before Jake spoke again. “So… One of the other operators passed on a rumor that the Mexicans are massing south of San Bernardino in Arizona.” He sipped at his glass with a knowing air. “Guess they figure there’re few enough Americans left, so they can just slide right in and take it all back like they planned. I mean, San Francisco’s already mostly gone, right? And how many people are still in Arizona anyway?”

Buck shook his head. “Mexicans have got to be as scared about it as we are,” he refuted. The bartender dropped a plate of food in front of him. “I figure the military’ll take care of them if they make a move.”

Jake chuckled. “You still on that? The Army wouldn’t do this to its own people. They got no reason to, do they?” He threw back the rest of his whiskey. “The Mexicans, on the other hand, got every reason in the world to want us out of the way.”

“Including your friend Alvarez over at the way station?” Buck joked. There was this drifter of a Mexican, dark and silent and dangerous-looking, who’d volunteered to help out with building the stagecoach stop between Pall and Four Corners, then stayed there mostly permanently once it was up and running. The quiet man and Jensen—who just couldn’t shut up once you got him started—had hit it off from the first, and Alvarez had even taken to helping lay the wires for the telegraph lines Jensen and his fellow operator in Pall were installing between the towns and the outlying ranches and farms. When they were in the same place, the two of them were damn near in each other’s pockets.

“Hell no,” Jake said quickly. “Carlos is totally different.”

Buck smirked. “Of course he is.”

“You two swapping conspiracies again?” Chris asked, plopping down in the seat next to Buck, drink already in his hand. 

“I’m talking real life,” Jake said. “He’s talking fantasy.”

Chris gave him a look. “I think you’re both crazy,” he said staunchly. “And I think we’d all be better off if you just shut up about it and went about your business.”

Jake bristled, but put on a smile Buck figured was only about half real. “Well, I can stop the talk right here for now,” he said easily, rising and leaving his empty glass at the table. “Got a date I got to get ready for.”

Buck snorted at the kid’s quick departure. “Still scaring the hell out of everybody, I see,” he accused Chris good-naturedly. “Glad to see some things don’t change.”

“I wasn’t trying to scare him,” Chris returned evenly. “And I’m not joking, either.” He sipped at his whiskey in a way that said he wasn’t likely to be drinking much more tonight and let the subject of Buck and Jake’s jawing go for the moment. “We better get ready for trouble. Ezra’s had it. And Nathan’s had it with him.”

That brought Buck a genuine smile for a few reasons—one of which was the look in Chris’s eyes when he talked about Standish. Buck had grown up in a brothel that didn’t just house women, and he’d lived enough after that to honestly not give a damn who a man lay with. He’d seen Chris smitten by a man before, as he sure as hell was now. Which of course made him fight the truth of that affection like a dog fights a rooster.

“Sort of surprised Nathan and that good ol’ boy’ve lasted as long as they have,” Buck admitted. Standish wasn’t one of those Southerners who wanted all black men in chains, but he was Southern enough to set Nathan off just by speaking in those Carolina tones and contrary enough to try a saint when it came to figuring out what it was about him that he was still alive. 

Buck liked the hell out of him.

“I think if Ezra calls Nathan a bloodsucker one more time, they’re going to come to blows,” Chris agreed. He sipped again and grew serious. “That damn cough of his is a hell of a red flag, though. I’m hoping we’re not going to have a problem once he’s let loose.”

“Well, if we do, we’ll know where it’s coming from,” Buck commented. At least Wheeler was out of the way. Not long after Billy Travis came back to town, the boy started having nightmares about his daddy’s death. Turned out Old Man Wheeler had been in on the murder and one of his partners had been threatening Billy that he’d kill his ma if Billy ever talked. It had been damn satisfying for everyone to send Wheeler off to Yuma and his partner straight to Hell.

Unfortunately, there were other agitators in town. Conklin and his cronies were pretty toothless, all told, but Bart Mason and his crew? They could be brutal and stupid, which was a combination Buck purely hated in a gang.

“The story of the asthma seems to be making the rounds pretty good,” Buck said. “Helps we got Jake and Mrs. Potter and a couple of others who’ve known people with it.”

“Ezra’s promised he’ll play the part of the recovering victim,” Chris said, nodding. 

Buck grinned. “Oh Ezra has, has Ezra?” he teased. “Y’all’ve gotten right chummy since Prince Charming woke up.”

Chris gave him a glare and said not a damn thing. Which was all the confirmation Buck needed.

“Reckon he can charm the pants off of everyone once we let him loose,” he said nonchalantly. 

That earned him another glare and he clapped Chris on the back. “I told you before, old dog. You find comfort where you find it.” He drained his glass and stood and stretched. “And right now, I think I’m gonna go find mine with sweet Miss Loretta.”

He left Chris stewing in his own juices, hoping the stubborn cuss would think about what he said. Buck knew it weren’t so much that Chris despised that part of himself the way some men did; he probably just didn’t like to think about feeling that way again about anyone.

But if you were going to keep breathing, you might as well live, right?

************

Nathan stared intently through the eyepiece of his microscope, trying to ignore the frequent glances shot his way by the two men playing poker on the table in the corner.

After seven days, Standish’s leg hadn’t mended quite yet, but his arm was sound enough, if a little weak. His eye was fully healed and working and of the bruises and swelling that had made him look so pitiful just days ago, there was no sign. He’d explained that bones took a little longer to heal than flesh did, and the fact that he knew that at all made Nathan wonder, again, what the man had been through in the past seven months. 

Josiah looked over at him again and Nathan stopped counting blood cells and sighed. “You gonna bet, or you gonna stare?” he asked sharply. 

“Depends on what you found,” Josiah said reasonably.

Standish didn’t say anything, but his nervousness was thick and cold around him. Nathan had been taking daily blood samples, checking him, studying. And the whole time, as much grief as the conman gave him about being a bloodsucker and a madman with a microscope, Ezra hadn’t really complained. Not seriously. He wanted the answers as badly as Nathan did. Worse, likely.

Nathan sat back. Hell, it was Ezra’s life here. He might as well talk this out with them.

“Well,” he said finally, addressing Ezra. “Your blood is getting better now you’re mostly recovered, like I thought it would.”

“So I’m unlikely to go insane and try to bite any of you any time soon,” Ezra said fatalistically, tossing two cards on the pile and dealing himself replacements.

Nathan sighed. “Not that I can see.” He looked at the drawings on his wall—at the new column of sketches that had been added since Ezra stumbled in the gate—and sighed. “I think maybe Cossican was right at the beginning, though. It’s a case of the body and the contaminant coming to some sort of equal footing. Neither one wins.” He studied Nicholas’s drawings, with their larger number of new blood cells and their sparse number of contaminant cells.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Josiah asked, his hand of cards sitting face down on the table.

“Yes and no,” Nathan said. He rose and removed the latest slide from the microscope, packing it into the proper box and adding the sketch he’d drawn of it to the column of Ezra’s blood samples. “It means we can probably keep Ezra here alive indefinitely, as long as he don’t get hurt too bad or too often.” Both of the others looked at him curiously and he explained. “When you came in, right at the beginning, your blood looked like this—” he pointed to the first sketch— “sort of half and half. About a day into that deep sleep of yours, the contaminant cells had started to multiply—not as bad as Mrs. Meyers, just… multiplying. As you got better, you just seemed to start building new cells that knocked them out.” He shook his head. “I figure if you were hurt so bad you slept for days, the contaminant would take over enough that you’d…”

“Go insane and try to bite you all.” Ezra didn’t sound shocked, just resigned. Nathan wondered if the poor man had always assumed he was going to turn zombie anyway. Hell of a way to live.

Nathan snorted at that, then sighed deeply at the bigger picture. Cossican’s death burned at him, though he was only the latest in a long line of losses. They’d started this with fourteen doctors and healers, and between zombies destroying towns whole and the increasing breakdown of communications in the West, they were now pretty much left with Yao in Kansas City, Parker in Denver, Hillerman and Iola out East, and Nathan himself. 

If he was right, the world wouldn’t need any of them. “The problem is, if I’m right and it’s a case of the body fighting it to a standstill, I don’t see how we can make a vaccine—it’d likely kill as many people as it cured, since we got no idea how to get the body to balance it out. You really would have to infect people and hope they survived.”

“ _ That _ seems an endeavor doomed to utter failure,” Ezra muttered. 

“Yeah,” Nathan agreed. “It don’t mean we couldn’t stop the epidemic, though. I mean, people still get smallpox, but it don’t run rampant the way it used to. People know how to stop from getting this—more and more towns are like us, making sure they get the zombies before the zombies get them.” He sighed, realizing that more places were as likely to shoot people like Ezra as to help them. “We just have to keep getting the word out, like with Mrs. Travis’s pamphlets. Contact healers and doctors wherever we can, to teach them the best ways to care for people while they wait for the body to make a decision.”

“Could I…?” Standish seemed to be having trouble saying the words, but both men looked at him expectantly. “I have wondered whether the disease could be spread by… people such as myself. Inadvertently.”

Nathan had been wondering that, too. Since Nicholas was around, in fact. He’d always meant to discuss it with Cossican, but of course it was too late for that now.

“I really don’t know,” he offered, raising his hands in defeat. “I mean, Carpenter lived with his wife and boys for a while after he was bit, and they’re all fine. Mrs. Meyers and her family…” He realized they weren’t much of an example and let that trail off. And then he spoke from his gut. “I figure if you were going to pass it on, you’d’ve done it by now, right?” Standish looked doubtful, maybe even a little horrified. “As far as I can tell from the stories we been collecting, I wouldn’t think you could pass it on any way but by blood.” He shrugged. “Or being intimate, maybe? I saw Nicholas and his wife kiss a few times before he died and she never had a problem from that. I never asked if they… I’m figuring he wouldn’t risk it.”

Ezra sat staring at the deck of cards in his hand for a long moment after that, and Nathan wondered what he was thinking. Was a damn bitter pill to swallow—you’d live, maybe, if you were careful. But you’d never be close to someone. Nathan hadn’t missed that Ezra maybe didn’t like women as much as the next man, but it wasn’t his place to mention it. And he wasn’t sure it made any difference as far as the disease was concerned.

“I expect my mother would be thrilled to see that particular penchant of mine curbed,” Ezra said at length, his face sad and smile wry. 

And then like a switch, he changed tracks and grinned up at Josiah like nothing’d happened. “I believe the play is yours, Mr. Sanchez?”

Josiah looked over at Nathan with a stare that said he knew there was a problem and he’d work on it, and picked up his cards to study them.

“Two please,” he asked, discarding the right number. 

Nathan would have to watch this man. He wouldn’t have another survivor give in to despair like Nicholas did.

There was enough blood on his hands already.

********

Ezra, cane in hand, limped convincingly down the length of Four Corners, heading for the paddock on the east side of town. For appearance's sake, he hadn't been released from Nathan’s care until yesterday—ten days after entering the town where he’d figured to finally be shot in the head—and now he found himself in the strange situation of being… safe. No one wanted to run him out of town. People watched him hobble along and smiled sadly at him. His cough was pitied by those who had heard his story, and those kind souls were only too happy to pass on the tale of the beating he’d taken because of his lifelong affliction to those suspicious townspeople and visitors who hadn’t.

It was the perfect con, really. Gossip mills could go either way for a man like him, and he’d always been adept at changing the tide when he needed to. But the groundwork laid by the five men who all but ran the town had paved the way for him to be able, for the first time in a long time, to wander the streets with a fair amount of confidence that he wouldn’t have to draw his firearm or run for his life.

He’d inquired and found that the saloon Jackson and his friends frequented had lovely rooms available on the second floor. His stash of goods included enough fine liquor to pay his rent for a few months at least, and he figured, by then, he’d be making enough at the tables to continue his residence if he chose.

Jackson’s explanation of his health and the changes he’d have to make to his lifestyle had been difficult to process in the beginning. Not so much that he was going to be forever waiting for the disease to tip the balance in death’s favor—he’d been living with that for months—but the idea that his intimacies, rare though they had been in his position, could have caused others to succumb…

He shook his head, concentrating on his destination and trying to forget the past. A number of townspeople nodded politely at him, dressed in his usual finery. He was a curiosity for now, though that would pale at some point, surely. So, he hoped, would the obvious attraction a certain gunslinger shared with him.

He had flirted cautiously with Larabee until Jackson had dropped that bombshell. Now he simply tried to avoid the man. Damn hard to do in a town this size, with a crew of men as close as Larabee and his men seemed to be.

“Mr. Standish! Mr. Standish!” 

The high little-boy call had him turning carefully to see the blond blur that was Billy Travis barrelling toward him. 

“Good morning, Young Mr. Travis,” he greeted with a smile, as the young boy fetched up next to him. Buck and JD had told him the story of the boy’s father and the trials he’d been through, and he knew from experience that the past could destroy a child if he wasn’t careful. But Billy had a mother who loved him and that counted for a lot, though she sometimes seemed as busy and self-involved as his own mother had been. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m good,” Billy proclaimed. “Chaucer’s out in the pasture,” he offered, excited. “She’s doing real good—JD and Chris say she’ll be back to normal in a couple of weeks, if she’s careful.”

Ezra smiled wryly. “I fear Chaucer is not known for that, my friend.” He continued his stumping trek to the pasture fence and Billy fell into step beside him. “I do hear that you have been very good to her, though. I thank you.”

“She’s a pretty horse,” Billy said, by way of explanation. “And did you know she dances?”

Ezra shook his head. “Oh, Mr. Travis, you must be a special soul indeed,” he told the young boy, watching his blue eyes light up in glee. “Chaucer doesn’t dance for just anyone.”

Billy giggled at that as they reached the fence and watched the horses for a moment. Ezra grinned to see Chaucer bedeviling a large black stallion, relaxing unconsciously at the sight of her. She did look mostly recovered, if a little bit lame still, but happy. She had seen him through seven months of pursuits and getaways and lonely rides on trails that no one should have to travel in the dark of night. He didn’t know what he’d do without her.

“Mr. Chris says the bruises to her shins should heal real sound,” Billy said quietly, a reverence in his voice that had Ezra grinning even wider. Chris Larabee had a follower in this one.

“Mr. Chris knows a great deal about horses, doesn’t he?” he replied, turning to look down at the child. 

“Him and JD both,” Billy agreed. “One day, I’m gonna have a whole big ranch all my own and I’m gonna have a couple dozen horses at least and I’m gonna run the place just like they would!”

Ezra’s throat closed up in sudden sorrow. What child would get that wish now? With the world as it was?

“Billy!” 

Mary Travis’s slightly irritated call had Billy jumping guiltily. “I was supposed to go right home for breakfast after I checked on Jimney,” he said quietly, his gaze straying to the stable where a small appaloosa colt stood munching hay. 

Ezra looked over at the newspaper office to see Mary Travis standing in the doorway. He waved to her, watched her face soften as she waved back, and bent slightly toward Billy. “Tell your mother you were helping poor Mr. Standish to the pasture, won’t you?” he asked, winking at the child and garnering another giggle. “I do so appreciate the help.”

Billy winked back and took off toward his mama at top speed. “Bye, Mr. Standish!” he yelled, far too loudly for such an early hour. “Have a good day!”

Ezra watched Mrs. Travis gather her son in and lead him inside to breakfast before he turned back to watch his horse continue her antics. The black stallion nipped at her when she got too close, and Ezra chuckled to see her dance away from him. If she’d been Billy, no doubt she would have stuck out her tongue in challenge.

Poor Billy. Hell, poor every child of this time, he thought morosely. As dedicated and motivated and intelligent as Nathan Jackson was, he couldn’t change the way the world was now. Certainly Ezra had heard of the outlying cattle ranchers and farmers who patrolled their lands and fought off the zombies when they came, but the truth of it was that the kind of life Billy Travis dreamed of was just not possible anymore.

_ Like the life I dream of myself, _ he thought, a blackness coming over him, dulled only slightly by his horse’s play.

“She’s going to get herself bit if she keeps that up,” a rich voice said softly, making him jump. “Job isn’t known for his patience with that sort of thing.”

Chris Larabee was suddenly leaning against the fence, too close to him, staring out at the horses with those stunning eyes and that smile that did things to Ezra’s insides that he would never be allowed to enjoy again.

“Amusing, really, given his name,” Ezra said with a strained smile. “Believe me when I tell you that Chaucer can take care of herself. No stallion is going to get the best of her.”

Larabee turned to face him fully, and Ezra’s breath caught in his throat at the teasing, flirting look on the other man’s face. Larabee obviously knew Ezra was avoiding him, but he wasn’t one to give up, apparently. “Ain’t sure he wants to get the best of her so much as the rest of her, if you know what I mean.” He stayed where he was, almost daring Ezra to blush, until he figured out the futility of that endeavor and turned back to the horses. “I’m hoping he’ll be a good stud come Spring,” he said conversationally. “Traded a half dozen mares for him in Rolling Stream.”

Ezra ignored the way the world had suddenly gotten hot and close and instead studied the stallion carefully. “A good-looking specimen,” he agreed. Somewhere inside, he asked himself if he was talking about the horse or its breeder.

Larabee shot him a sidelong glance that seemed to ask the same question.

“I see you’re settling in,” Larabee said, moving to lean his back against the fence, staring at the town. “Bartender over at the saloon says he and you cut a deal for a month’s rent of that room.”

There was a question there that Ezra didn’t want to contemplate, and he felt his anxiety rise. Chris Larabee was a beautiful man, and in another life—a less hellish and damned and doomed life—he would take the man up on his unspoken desire in a moment….

Panic started settling in at the thought. He couldn’t agree to that now. Not with anyone. Lord, how many had he put in danger by flirting just like this? By bedding men—and women too—without a second thought to what he had become—

The cowbell on the Eastern gate not a hundred yards from them snapped him out of the spiral he was being sucked into. The panic gave way to that always-frightening compulsion to protect, and he tensed in anticipation, almost glad of the all-consuming interruption.

“Undead to the south!” a reedy voice shouted, quickly followed by gunfire. Ezra’s hand went instantly to the butt of his pistol and he began to run for the firing slits.

Larabee’s hand was almost instantly on his shoulder and Ezra swung blindly to dislodge him. 

“You’re going to break the damn splint,” Larabee hissed, grabbing him by the arm and  _ helping _ him to get into a firing position, holding him so close that his breath was an unbearable heat in Ezra’s ear. “You running your ass across the town ain’t gonna help your case.”

Ezra nodded, though he barely paid attention to the words.  _ They _ were out there, waiting, buzzing like flies attending a corpse. He drew his gun as he and Larabee arrived at the gate, and his adrenaline soared as the zombies came, only to be mown down by the dozen rifles and guns that took aim at them.

It was over quickly, as all such fights seemed to be here in Four Corners, and Ezra leaned against the adobe wall, allowing the strange energy the zombies raised in him to drain away.

“You’re a damn good shot, Standish,” said a slight man of about forty as he walked up from farther down the line. His grey hair stuck out in all directions, but his clothing was neat and proper, his face unlined and attractive, his brown eyes intense. “Reckon they just about scared you right out of that splint, now, didn’t they?”

Ezra looked down at his leg, chagrinned, and made a show of balancing on his  _ sound _ limb. 

“I’m afraid I forget my own infirmity when it comes to the evil without,” he said wryly. “I expect I’ll be paying for that.”

The man smiled. “Colm Trent,” he introduced himself. 

“Colm's our local tailor,” Larabee said, a subtle tease to his voice that combined with the high of the recent battle to make Ezra wish for roomier drawers. “I expect you and he’ll get along just fine—he’s the only one here who dresses as proper as you do.”

Trent stuck out his hand and Ezra shook it firmly. “It’s pleasure to meet you,” Ezra said. “I’m certain I shall be needing your services in the near future. I fear my wardrobe has suffered horribly from the current situation.”

The tailor looked him over, tsking in disapproval. “Those poor trousers are spent, Mr. Standish,” he said. “I had some lovely fine wool that has been waiting for a man of your obviously discriminating tastes.”

Larabee latched on to Ezra’s arm again and nodded to Trent, who, Ezra was sure, would be far more interested in his ass than in the cloth that covered it as they walked away. “I’m sure you could use some help back to the saloon, couldn’t you, Standish?” he offered helpfully.

Ezra nodded to his splinted leg and gave Trent a wan smile, not too full of promise. Though enough to garner a discount on the wool, no doubt. “I fear I am still ailing,” he agreed, allowing Larabee to lead him away.

“You might want to watch for him,” Larabee murmured as they headed for Ezra’s home—for the moment, anyway. “I hear he can be persistent when he wants something.”

The look in Larabee’s eyes was the basest of challenges. 

“Jealous?” Ezra heard himself ask, horrified by his own words as Larabee stumbled a moment in the dirt. 

Silence hung over them both for a long agonizing second. 

“Course not,” Larabee declared unconvincingly. He cleared his throat. "What is it with you and the undead?" he asked, obviously praying they could change the subject. “Never seen a man hop to like that.”

Ezra obliged him gratefully. "I wish I knew. They are simple a scourge I must eliminate. An itch I must scratch."

Hell. Stupid turn of phrase.

Each of them did his best to ignore that the exchange had happened at all, and Larabee disappeared as soon as they reached the saloon’s front door.

Ezra sighed. At least now the lovely man might leave him alone.

"Not likely," he whispered to himself as he hobbled in for coffee. "Not damn likely."

**********

Chris sat and nursed an afternoon beer and watched Ezra play cards. He’d been doing it every day for a week now, since the two of them had had that… discussion. Or whatever it was.

Standish had managed to charm enough people that he was looked at as more of a lovable scoundrel than an actual conman. Which, Chris thought with a grin, went to show what a great conman he was, really. He was still limping his way through the town, but Nathan had told Chris the eye patch was going away in the next couple of days, a plausible amount of time for the injury to heal. 

All that would be left in a month was the cough. Britt Potter had told Nathan of a bourbon-and-cocaine-infused honey drop that could be sucked on to quiet the wheezing cough of an asthmatic, and it hadn’t taken but a few bats of Standish’s one visible eye before Britt was cooking them up for him herself. 

The drops worked well enough for Ezra to choose them over either beggar’s stalk or tobacco. He’d ordered some stramonium to be delivered to the town, to control the cough more fully, but God only knew when it would arrive. Chris had smiled at that—at Standish listing Four Corners as his home, even temporarily. Maybe they could get him to stay anyway, even if Nathan couldn’t really help him. He was a good man to have around, as evidenced by his response to both of the zombie attacks they’d had since he appeared.

The healer had explained his newest ideas on the epidemic, and Parker in Denver and Yao in Kansas City reluctantly agreed with him. The doctors in the East were still on the fence—the disease was academic to them, damn it. Hell if they’d be so noncommittal with zombies breathing down  _ their _ necks. The consensus was, though, that while Ezra’s body was clearly mounting a defense against the contaminant, it didn’t look to be one that could be passed on, like with smallpox. The contaminant was more parasite than plague, it seemed. 

Chris stared at the gambler as Ezra sat at his usual table, sucking on his honey drop and steadily relieving a pair of players of their money. The attraction Chris had felt right off had never really faded, much as he wanted it to. He hadn’t been with a man since he’d met Sarah all those years ago, and starting into that hidden way of living again, hell, starting into caring about  _ anyone _ that way, was just not something he wanted.

Except…

“Hey, old dog!” Buck plopped down next to him, cutting off the train of thought before it could piss Chris off any more. “Did you hear Ginny Madsen is having her baby?”

Chris looked at him closely. “Now why exactly would I care about that?” he asked.

Buck grinned big. “Because her husband just sent a telegram up to the McElroys’ farm to ask their daughter Myra to attend the birth. And where Myra goes…”

“Her twin sister Rainey follows,” Chris finished for him. The McElroy twins were nearing thirty, sweet and attractive. They were neither of them as interested in marriage as they were in farming, and Chris figured their parents probably couldn’t be happier for the work and the company—happy enough to overlook their younger twin’s indiscretions. Both girls were damn good shots with a rifle, which didn’t hurt any, either.

“Yep,” Buck agreed. “Reckon Miss Rainey’ll be looking for a diversion while her sister does the midwifing.”

Chris grinned gamely but his eyes strayed back to Standish, who now sat alone at his table, having sent the last of the losers packing while Buck jawed.

Buck, of course, noticed. “You ain’t thought a bit about what I said the other day, have you?” he accused.

“Thought about it plenty,” Chris said, angry all over again. “Don’t matter none anyway, whatever I choose. He ain’t interested.”

Buck laughed at that, but kept his voice down in the now almost empty room. “Hell, Chris, aside from you, I ain’t seen a more interested man.” He looked over at where Ezra was clearly watching Chris and trying not to. “Nothing’s going to happen if you don’t open your damn mouth and say something.” He stood and slapped Chris hard on the back. “I’m going to go out and escort the lovely McElroy sisters into town,” he said with a randy smile. “I expect not to be the only man to enjoy himself tonight, you hear?”

Chris growled at him as he left, but as usual, it didn’t make any impression. 

Ezra was still watching him. Trying to look like he wasn’t watching him.

Damn it.

Sucking in an annoyed breath, Chris rose and headed to the table on the other side of the room. Ezra shuffled his cards and smiled blandly without looking up. “Mr. Larabee,” he greeted pleasantly. “Care for a game of chance?”

_ I guess you could call it that, _ Chris thought to himself wryly. He dug into his pocket and dropped a nickel in the center of the table.

Ezra sniffed at it. “Nickel ante?” he said, disdaining. “Well, as the room is woefully empty of other opponents…” He sighed like he knew that was exactly why Chris was there. “Any port in a storm, I suppose.”

“Sort of like Four Corners altogether, huh?” Chris asked. He was dealt a hand of five in the blink of an eye and he fanned them out quickly: a pair of tens and a queen. 

“The very same,” Ezra agreed. He held firm and Chris discarded three, each man dropping in another nickel. Ezra raised an eyebrow at Chris’s move and dealt the replacements. “I believe it’s your play.”

Chris steeled himself and opened his mouth—

“Not that play,” the gambler said sadly.

“And what play did you think I was making?” Chris asked, curious to hear the answer.

Eyes on the cards, Ezra spoke slowly, his voice soft. “I know I am correct in assuming that you and I… share a mutual interest in certain… activities, shall we say?”

Chris grinned. “Never heard a man talk around it like that,” he said lightly. “But yeah. Reckon you are.” Maybe it really was as easy as opening his damn mouth.

“I regret to inform you that that will never happen.” Ezra’s voice was sad and completely adamant.

The finality of it stopped Chris in his tracks for a minute. He looked at the nine, jack, and king he was dealt and tossed three nickels into the kitty. “Can I ask why?” he asked.

Ezra upped him ten cents. “I admit to being surprised that I need to. Given that you know exactly what I am.”

Chris wasn’t even sure what he meant. “A conman? I ain’t planning for you to look after my money, Ezra,” he replied, trying for a joking tone.

Ezra froze, his free hand balled into a fist. “I am sure Mr. Jackson informed you of the entirety of my condition,” he tried again.

“He said you had some kind of balance with the black crap in your blood,” Chris replied, purposely ignoring the proper terms to let Ezra know he neither knew nor cared how the damn disease worked.

“And did he also inform you that there is a possibility that I might pass on this disease?” Ezra asked, looking up at Chris with the most brutal glare, full of hurt and shame. “That I am nothing more than an unspent shell in danger of taking out those around me?”

Chris shook his head at the self-loathing. “If Nathan actually thought that, he wouldn’t have spent the last year trying to help people who been bit.”

“A wasted effort, to be certain,” Ezra grated. He tossed his cards into the kitty and rose. “I believe I managed to deal myself a poker hand not much better than the cards fate has dealt me. Thankfully, this pot is small enough to walk away from.”

“Ezra?” Chris called, finding his voice before the gambler stalked out the door, again forgetting the limp he didn’t need to have. Ezra froze at the call, but there was anger radiating from every pore. “Are you staying?”

Ezra’s chin dropped to his chest and he was silent for too long. “Mr. Rickman and I have made an exchange for a month’s lease on that room,” he said almost silently. “I see no reason to waste the trade of a fine Kentucky bourbon by forfeiting my residence.”

Chris nodded, not at all encouraged. “You watch that leg now,” he reminded the gambler, swallowing the desire to say so much more. Until Ezra got his head on straight, there was nothing to be done.

“I’m certain it will be back to its proper condition in no time at all, Mr. Larabee.” And then he limped out, and Chris was left with the overwhelming urge to hit something.

God damn the world, anyway.

********   
the end


End file.
